"A
family blood feud
between
neighbors over land in the rural sugarcane
fields of the Brazil of
1910."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

The Brazilian Walter Salles's fairy-tale-like story,
a
follow-up
to Central Station (1998). It's an unpleasant formal
piece about the
never
ending circle of violence following a family blood
feud between
neighbors
over land in the rural sugarcane fields of the Brazil
of 1910. This
beautifully
filmed story is adapted from the novel by the Albanian
Ismaïl
Kadaré.
The message of the parable is only a too obvious one,
of how futile it
is to keep seeking revenge and of the redeeming power
of
self-sacrificing
love.

The precocious 10-year-old Pacu (Lacerda), the
teller of
the story
via flashback, is the little brother of Tonho
(Santoro). The
20-year-old
Tonho is ordered by his stern father (Dumont), the
head of the Breves
clan,
to kill his neighbor's son to avenge the death of
Tonho's older brother
Inacio. There's a truce for a month, but when the
blood has turned
yellow
--which means the dried blood on his victim's shirt
turns yellow in the
sun and the next full moon appears, the truce is over.

This bloodshed is carried on by the patriarchs of
both the
Breves
and Ferreira families in a ritualistic manner, as they
feel to not take
revenge would mean the loss of honor for their
families. The cycle of
revenge
is followed by the rigid and stern father of Pacu
without a thought
that
there could be any other alternative, so that he has
not given his
youngest
son a name and is just called Kid. He receives the
name Pacu from a
visiting
itinerant circus performer, Salustiano (Vasconcelos),
who names him
after
a river fish. The shaggy looking circus performer's
traveling
companion
is the attractive Clara (Antonio), who is a
fire-eater. She gives Pacu
a book to read about mermaids, which the kid values
very dearly as it
opens
up his imagination.

After Tonho revenges his brother's death, the old
blind
patriarch
(Pontes) of the Ferreira clan orders a truce until the
blood turns
yellow.
The handsome Tonho helps his hardworking mother
(Assemany) and father
just
try to scrape by in their austere life. He helps cut
down the sugar
cane
and process it for sale in town. But the town merchant
tells them with
the invention of the steam machine the price of sugar
keeps falling and
the old way of doing it by hand is about to become
extinct. Ultimately,
this is a film about letting go of the past wrongs and
learning how to
live in the modern world.

Tonho's sheltered life changes when he attends the
circus
and falls
in love with Clara. It is this contact with the
outside world that
influences
the brothers to see if they can get in step with the
modern and
changing
world, and see if their family cycle of violence can
end. The
politically
correct message was not enough of a reason for me to
care much for this
rather dullish arthouse pic. The harshness of the
story is relieved
only
by the gorgeous photography of Walter Carvalho, and
the attractiveness
of Antonio (a real circus performer who is now
studying acting) and the
heartthrob Santoro.